The present invention relates to tobacco extracts, and in particular to processes for providing selected flavorful components from tobacco in a concentrated form.
Popular smoking articles such as cigarettes have a substantially cylindrical rod shaped structure and include a charge of smokable material such as shreds or strands of tobacco (i.e., cut filler) surrounded by a wrapper such as paper thereby forming a tobacco rod. It has become desirable to manufacture cigarettes having cylindrical filters aligned in an end-to-end relationship with the tobacco rod. Typically, filters are manufactured from fibrous materials such as cellulose acetate and are attached to the tobacco rod using a circumscribing tipping material.
An important step in the cigarette manufacturing process involves the casing and top dressing of the smokable material. For example, a wide variety of flavorants (which may include concentrated tobacco extracts) are applied to the smokable materials in order to increase the smoke quality and other such characteristics of the cigarette. As a result, interest in concentrated extracts of particular components of tobacco has increased. For example, various processes for producing and using tobacco extracts, aroma oils and concentrates are proposed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,136,321 to Davis; 3,316,919 to Green; 3,424,171 to Rooker; 4,421,126 to Gellatly and 4,506,682 to Mueller. Such materials conveniently can be applied to tobacco laminae, reconstituted tobacco sheet and other engineered tobacco materials, cigarette filters and other substrates, and the like.
It would be highly desirable to provide an improved process for efficiently and effectively producing tobacco extracts, and in particular to a process for producing a concentrated tobacco extract.